25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them (27 page)

I was given an opportunity to experience what children must go through when they are not allowed to go to the restroom. I participated in Dr. Richard deCharms’s famous motivation training workshops. Before one of the activities, the facilitator informed us that we would not be allowed to go to the restroom or do anything until the activity was over. The activity was scheduled to last for a long period of time. As the realization set in, there was audible grumbling and whispers of disapproval. At first, no one said anything.
One or two people decided to test the policy. The facilitator effectively admonished them and, using her best teacher voice, she made them sit down to wait. The power of suggestion is strong. Most of us started to feel a need to go to the restroom, a feeling that became increasingly uncomfortable as we waited and waited. No one wanted to create a scene, so no one else tried to go. However, the group became somewhat hostile and distracted. That experience taught me quite a bit about allowing students to go to the restroom. The facilitators were trying to demonstrate the origin vs. pawn concept (deCharms, 1976). They were showing us that when we force children to beg or wait for permission to use the restroom, we are teaching them to feel like pawns. Pawns feel like they are controlled by forces external to them, such as other people. It is more desirable to teach them to feel like origins, or that what happens to them is controlled from within them. Origins have an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1954) and feel that they have some control over their lives.

I found an effective way to allow my students to function as origins as they took care of their needs. I encouraged my students to view going to the restroom and getting water as a privilege that was theirs as long as they did not abuse it. They would have a morning break and an afternoon break where they could leave and come back without permission. The procedure was one person would go out at a time. They would exit by rows and as soon as one person returned, the next person could leave. The policy was flexible enough to allow more than one person to use the restroom in an emergency.

As adults we demand the right to have this private time to do as we please and students deserve the same right. Some teachers are reluctant to relinquish their power to deny some students access to the bathroom because they are afraid of potential discipline problems or some form of disruption.

When a child has an “accident,” the teacher should know the school’s policy for handling this emergency. If there is no school policy, the teacher should contact a parent for a change of clothing and remove the child from the audience to avoid further humiliation. The teacher should first remove the child from the classroom as inconspicuously as possible and entrust him or her to the care of the school nurse or other adult until the parent arrives. If the parents cannot be reached and the school nurse is not available, the teacher, in the company of another adult, could assist the child. Hopefully the teacher has anticipated toilet “emergencies” and has a second set of clothing for each child or instructions from the parents for what to do in this situation.

SCENARIO 13.7
Wait, Wait . . . Too Late

My worst experience happened to me when I was in the third grade. The teacher’s name was Mrs. A. The announcements came over the intercom and she was trying to listen to them. I went up to her and asked if I could go to the restroom and she said, “Not right now, go sit down.” The announcements were still on, so I waited a few minutes and then I asked her again. I told her I really needed to go and she told me just to wait and go sit back down. I sat back down and I held it as long as I could and finally I wet myself and she felt so bad, she started crying and kept apologizing.

In this scenario, the teacher was so preoccupied and distracted by the announcements that were coming over the intercom that she effectively blew off a student’s pleas to go to the restroom. Her tears showed that she felt responsible for the child’s accident. She did try to apologize but the damage was already done. As evidenced by this worst experience scenario, the student will not forget this incident.

The solution here is very simple: Whenever a child says, “I need to use the restroom,” say, “Sure, go ahead.” Caring teachers do not require children to ask for permission, especially if there is a restroom nearby. Effective teachers teach restroom etiquette, such as observing the “in use” or “open” sign and cleaning up after using the restroom. Hall passes are often necessary if the restroom is a long way from the class.

In teacher’s college we were taught to encourage the student to sit down and wait a little longer. Meanwhile, the child squirms and writhes in agony, counting every second. The purpose of asking them to wait is to discourage the fakers. The assumption is that they will forget about going to the restroom if they really do not have to go. Insightful teachers that use this type of policy are careful to watch their students for any signs of discomfort. At the first sign, they send them to the restroom immediately. I know from firsthand experience how uncomfortable it is to have to wait to use the restroom. I was on a shuttle that was taking me from a New York airport to my hotel. It was late at night and I was unaware that the trip would take a couple of hours. Near the end of the trip, I was so uncomfortable, but I was reluctant to ask the bus driver to pull over on a dark, snowy, icy road so that I could use the restroom. I came dangerously close to having an accident. Understandably, I have much empathy for students’ discomfort when they are forced to wait to use the restroom. My motto is “When they have to go, you have to let them go.”

SCENARIO 13.8
Right of Privacy: None of Your Business

In sixth grade I had a teacher, Mrs. E., who refused to allow me to use the restroom when I desperately needed to. It was during my monthly and she tried to make me tell out loud why I needed to go. I walked out. She called the principal. He defended me!

Why do some teachers insist on students making a bathroom broadcast to get permission to use the restroom? It is intrusive behavior that ignores a child’s right to privacy. In this scenario, the teacher forced a power struggle by demanding that the student say what she planned to do in the bathroom. The teacher set herself up for the student to undermine her teacher power. The student ignored her and walked out to use the bathroom without disclosing what she was going to do.

I have heard of similar situations where teachers have devised ways for students to disclose their bathroom business. In one case, the teacher required students that wanted to use the bathroom to hold up one finger if they had to urinate and two fingers if they had to defecate. In another case, the color of the hall pass would indicate what the student had to do. Teachers do not really care about what the students are going to do, they simply either want to use these methods as a deterrent or a way to monitor the length of time a student will probably stay in the restroom.

Experienced teachers do not need a bathroom broadcast to be effective. They recognize children’s rights to be protected from
intrusion
into their private bathroom business. Competent teachers simply allow a reasonable amount of time for the child to urinate or defecate and pad that with a little time to dawdle. The end result is that the students’ private business remains private and there is little, if any, routine interruption of class time.

SCENARIO 13.9
Pass the Pass Pronto

The worst experience I ever had with a teacher was in third grade. I had a teacher who was an elderly woman and was extremely strict. Mrs. R. was her name. Well anyway, I really needed to go to the restroom and the policy at the time was one student at a time would be issued a hall pass. Well, as it turned out a student already had the hall pass so incidentally she told me I had to wait till the other student returned. When the other student returned I was in agony with holding my bowels. So anyway as I made my way to the restroom, I had an accident and never returned to her class that day. Instead I went to the office and complained of being sick so I went home.

Apparently, the policy for using the restroom was strictly enforced. Only one student at a time was allowed to use the hall pass. Teachers use this policy to keep students from socializing in the restrooms. Unfortunately, in their efforts to restrict the number of students leaving the class, they may restrict a student who genuinely has to use the restroom such as the student in the scenario. Sometimes the
school has a policy about the number of students in the hall at one time. Teachers should be aware of the policy and comply as long as it is reasonable to do so.

Experienced teachers can usually anticipate unforeseen events such as two students genuinely needing to use the restroom at the same time when there is only one hall pass. They have a plan B such as an emergency pass or an “act now and explain later” policy where students leave in an emergency rather than soil themselves trying to wait. Understandably, teachers would be concerned that students would abuse the latter policy. One way to minimize abuse would be to keep the emergency pass in the teacher’s desk and allow students to get it without permission. Students who wanted to play might be deterred by having to get the pass out of the teacher’s desk. A student who truly needed to use the restroom would welcome the flexibility in the policy. Resourceful teachers know that some abuse may occur but there are other measures such as bathroom checks to curtail undesirable activity. Most importantly, teachers should empathize with the agony children feel when they are trying to control their bladders or bowels for a long time. It is a difficult battle that children frequently lose.

Scenario 13.10
Toilet Tyrant

One semester at Southwest Texas State University I had a biology teacher whose restroom policy was ridiculous. On the first day of class he let us know that if we left class to use the bathroom he would flunk us from the course. There were absolutely no exceptions. He said, “I do not want any documentation of a bladder infection or an excuse of pregnancy.” One girl spoke out against this nonsense. He proceeded to kick her out of class. As a freshman in college I was terrified to flunk a class so I never used the restroom during class.

Tyranny is the offspring of insecurity and a need for power. Teachers who establish such a heavy-handed authoritarian discipline policy need to control others to feel secure. Denying others a right that is theirs by birth, namely, the right to use the restroom whenever nature calls, provides the dictator of such a policy a heightened sense of power. This teacher’s refusal to accept any excuse no matter how legitimate or urgent was his assurance of no possible threat to his self-constructed autocracy and his piteous outcry for power. He blatantly misused grades to enforce compliance to his absolute rule. Like many tyrants throughout history, he used extreme punishment to extinguish any threat to his tenuous power. His intent in using extreme punishment with a student was to incite terror in the other, the hope being that the rest of the students in the class would vicariously experience the consequences of the student
that was kicked out of class. It worked; his ridiculous policy terrorized the author of this scenario so much that not only did she never ask to use the restroom in his class, but she never used the restroom in other college classes. Her fear of failing a class outweighed any sense of outrage that her rights as an adult student and human being were being violated. In this case, the student would never even request to use the restroom. This teacher accomplished his mission to the hefty price of his students’ loss of freedom.